Sugar with everything

[imomus]

Sugar Rush is a fascinating, terrifying and important Guardian Special Report about sugar in food. Sugar is so addictive it should be classified, says the British Medical Journal, as a hard drug. The immediate pleasure it gives us soon leads to much less pleasant things -- tooth decay, obesity, diabetes, cancer, depression and anxiety. More and more of the food we eat -- even fresh fruit and vegetables and savoury stuff -- is, basically, turning into sugar. Whether we choose to eat the stuff or not, it's everywhere, bred into crops and brewed into beer and sprinkled into cooking and stuffed into every plastic-wrapped package lying in wait for you at the late-night grocery. There's more of it in more products than there was even in the early 1990s. It's there for commercial reasons. We like it, we buy it.



Read the article yourself -- I did, while sucking on a marzipan potato. What I want to single out and pick up on today is just one quote that pops up half way through, a quote I found very interesting, very symptomatic. A "sugar apologist" is speaking, an executive who worked for Cadbury Schweppes for 23 years before becoming a market researcher. Colin Gutteridge is explaining the "taste evolution" towards today's sugar-with-everything world.

"I remember being presented with yoghurt for the first time when I was nine," Gutteridge says. "It was acidic and I thought it was repulsive. If there is a trend over the past 100 years it is taking products that are marginal in taste and making them more acceptable to a wider range of people by adding in sweetness. Does any of this matter? Personally, I don't think so. Without it I would never have enjoyed yoghurt."

Now, never mind sugar, what Gutteridge is describing could as well be the story of indie bands signing to major labels, or New Labour. It's the application to the food world of the old question "what profiteth a man if he gain the whole world but lose his own soul?" Let's look at Gutteridge's argument more closely.

1. Yoghurt is acidic, repulsive.
2. Sugar is pleasant, popular.
3. Yoghurt is marginal.
4. Sugar is central.
5. If we put sugar in yoghurt, it can become central, mainstream.
6. Therefore, by adding sugar, we can help people to enjoy yoghurt, and help yoghurt to go mainstream. Everyone wins!

But here are the contradictions Gutteridge doesn't seem to see in his argument:

7. Is this sweetened yoghurt still yoghurt? Isn't it just sugar posing as yoghurt?
8. If you believe yoghurt is essentially repulsive, why help people to enjoy it in the first place? Why not just eliminate it?

I think these last two questions raise troubling thoughts about democracy, consumerism, the free market and other systems that purport to give people what they want. People usually want things that stimulate them in the most stupid and obvious ways. Like rats in a lab experiment, we'll push the button that gives us orgasm, or money, or a sugary snack. Given half a chance, we'll push it until it kills us. We sort of know this, and we sort of feel guilty. Rather than gulping down pound bags of sugar all day, we try to balance our diets, eat healthy things like vegetables and yoghurt. If those things also turn out to have sugar in them, well, at least it's a blend of the palatable and the virtuous. We did try.

The system doesn't really want to change, but it does want to think well of itself. So, instead of revealing its monopoly face and just showing us its addictive trade in drugs and sugar and arms and energy (and in the case of sugar it was a brutal slave trade), it shows us a diverse system in which lots of healthy things are also for sale -- yoghurt and indie pop and intelligent literature -- and in which the Labour party can sometimes come to power rather than the business-friendly Conservatives. And yet, when you look closer, you find that the Labour Party has come to power at the price of expunging Clause 4 of its constitution -- the idea that the goal of the party is to secure for workers the full fruits of their labour. That's the core DNA of the Labour movement, its "yoghurt".

The price of success is often the complete destruction of all otherness, all identity, all soul, all flavour, all texture. And yet success on those terms isn't success at all. It's a kind of possession, a capitulation. Nothing fails like success. By failing to provide a real alternative, by giving the public only what it thinks it wants, you're failing them as well as yourself. Instead of giving them the full fruits of their labour, you offer them a fruit stuffed full of sugar.

Comments

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

7. Is this sweetened yoghurt still yoghurt? Isn't it just sugar posing as yoghurt?

That's like saying "If you add a lot of water to soup, is it still soup?" Yes, it's still soup/yoghurt, but it's quality suffers.

Momus, your most charming paradox is that, politically, you cannot accept the idea of "quality" and yet artistically/philosophically, nothing could be more important. I love these posts where you have to reconicle this paradox within yourself in order to provide social commentary. In my opinion, this inner conflict quietly inspires your best posts.

[heliumflash.livejournal.com]

you're right, too much sugar isn't good for you, and a lot of behavioural problems can be put down directly to bad diet. however, i feel that the effect of sugar in foods on society pales in comparison to the effect of alchohol on society, a drug which, next to tobacco, is one of the major killers in western society, and yet is not only sanctioned by governments which profit, like tobacco, from its sale, but the consumption of which is also openly encouraged, and at a younger and younger age. im worried about a government which profits from peddling sweetie drinks to kids in the shape of alcopops. and my main concern isnt the sugar content...

...i like the pic of the lollipops btw :)

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I personally think one of Momus' most charming paradoxes is his continual philosophical opposition toward prevalence brought along by market success - which, I wait with bated breath, he will surely at some point begin to consistently apply on his own commercially succesful art.

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Ah, the old "Cynical (but true) viewpoint: anything that is advertised enough will sell, unless it is in direct opposition to the values of nearly everyone, i.e. Kiddie Porn Flakes as a breakfast cereal, so that what is popular is usually hyped up trash..."

versus

The realistic (but also true) viewpoint: "there's nothing stopping quality products from being properly advertised. So, occasionally, quality sells."

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I can sympathise with imomus when he writes about poor-quality trash being endemic and he not liking it, regardless of how we feel about the word quality. It's perfectly okay for him to complain. I mean, man, did I ever whine about how bad Sahara was, right? I view it as a kind of cosmic consumer feedback and imomus has tastes that are not very prevalent (and which is therefore interesting to me, since I like variety and chaos).

But whenever imomus slips into the Oscar Wilde mode and starts telling us how capitalism specifically has made everyone dumb because they don't like what he likes, and sort of broadly implies how it'd be better if we'd all just change distribution systems, I have to ask myself what spontaneous power it is that's is going to affect people so that they'll suddenly stop buying Britney Spears rubbish. And, well, since this is about politics, it's apparently coercion.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The idea that putting lots of sugar in all kinds of food, so that people consume too much sugar whether they want it or not, is coercion

versus

The idea that objecting to putting lots of sugar in all kinds of food (etc) leads to a system of coercion.

The dangerous implication here: "we must put up with the coercion we have because the alternative is an unknown or new kind of coercion".

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

There is hardly sugar in "everything", though - you are perfectly at liberty to purchase the usual yoghurt and, as I indicated, lobby energetically for more sugar-free products in the absence of sufficient amounts of sugar-free products. And, most importantly, there is nothing actually coercing you to purchase yoghurt with sugar added to it. (One could always invoke the Satan of Advertising, of course, but meat is advertised on the telly constantly and yet principled vegans are somehow increasing their numbers... suggesting that people can and do think for themselves.)

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

A lot of this depends on where you shop and how inherently lazy one is. When shopping for groceries, I find it remarkably easy to avoid added sugar, corn syrup, artificial colors & flavors, etc because I READ THE LABELS and shop at health food stores, gourmet supply shops, open air produce markets, etc.

My particular laziness comes into play when I am in a social setting outside of my home. I don't make demands on my hosts (outside of my usual unusual dietary requirements and broad restrictions) and surely consume these same additives on occasion (thankfully, most of my close friends have similar label-reading and grocery-shopping habits to my own).